So today I read something on Charles Stross' blog (pointed there from Making Light) for the first time in months. Then I started reading back through the prior list of posts on the front page, until I got to Designing Society for Posterity, an ideas post about the nature of society which would need to be created in order to handle Generation Ships (extremely long distance - interstellar - colonisation). Which sucked me in massively (not just the post itself, but at least the first eighty of the three-hundred something comments which followed). So, after pulling myself away from that for long enough to get the next batch of truffle mix into the fridge and chilling (prior to rolling things into balls and chilling again, then choc-dipping), I switched over to Shakesville - and promptly got pulled into another enthralling comments thread.

This has not been a good day for the housework. It's losing out in a major way to the distractions of teh intarwebs.

So today my readers get to have a mini-linkspam, along with reflections of my own.

First up - social engineering won't really be possible until we really have the tools to do the equivalent of performing maintenance on a social system while it's still running in such a way that the participants don't find such maintenance obtrusive or intrusive. At the moment, the only tools we have are fairly blunt ones, such as advertising, war, legislation and suchlike. They all have an effect, but often all they do is pass the problem on down the line for future generations to handle (to get an idea of how effective this isn't, consider that we're still dealing with fallout from a war which happened in Palestine in 69AD, and another which hit Afghanistan in roughly 325BC). So first we need to be able to fix potential problems fairly early on, before they expand outward with chaotic effects.

Second up - The issue of "who is a good guy" is one which highlights some of the current problems in our society - particularly our love of simplification and easy binaries. Humans are always going to be more complex than a mere binary axis can pinpoint, and so are human problems. This is why I always tend toward the notions of multiple solutions to a single identified problem, simply because there are always going to be underlying factors in every problem which aren't considered in an easy fix. For example, imprisoning people is the "easy" fix to the problem of crime - but it brings with it a range of different issues (such as the cost to the state as a whole of maintaining prisons and a justice system, dealing with the simple logistical issues of keeping them functional, and also coping with a society where prison culture is starting to shape a significant fraction of your population over time).

Third up - Every single time I see anything about the US political systems I wind up having at least one massive "WTF?" moment. The issue spoken about in the link is one which would be far more difficult to achieve here in Australia - mainly because the average Aussie tends to trust political parties about as far as they could heave the collected membership thereof, and therefore hasn't left anything significant in their hands. Voter data here belongs to the Commonwealth and State Governments (or in other words, to the Commonwealth and State public service) and there are some very strict rules about what can be collected, what can't be collected, what can be done with the data, who has access to it, who they can give the data to, how it can and can't be stored, and what's allowed to be done with it in the meantime.

Fourth up - Currency, cash flow and crime and the relations between all of these. One of the most basic things about money is that it devalues - this is a universal. It doesn't matter how solid the currency is, it will wind up devaluing in one way or another. To put it another way, all money is ultimately inflationary, whether legitimately acquired or illegitimately acquired. The process of resetting the value of $CURRENCY is generally nasty, since it gets started at the top of the tree, and winds up hurting everyone all the way down - those at the bottom of the heap get the worst of it. One other small reflection: I started to think the US economy had effectively gone down the tubes when Australian dollars were very near parity point with the US dollar - given the Australian economy is approximately 1/15th the size of the US economy, it's probably a pretty good indicator.

Finally - Girl Genius is still my favourite web comic. Endless fun, drama, suspense, thrills, action and, of course, Mad Science!!!

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Yeah, we've moved. Almost two weeks ago, in fact (first Thursday in December was the move in date); all over save the unpacking now. Himself seems to have most of the networking problems sorted out (for a while there we had two out of three of internet, working wireless network, and working gateway) so while I don't yet have a desk (it's on the list of furniture to purchase at some stage) I'm able to turn a corner of the dining table into my computer space.

The new place has a lot of good features about it, but one of the negative ones is there's approximately one-third the storage space of the old place. On the positive side, it has a bedroom more than the old place, so we've turned the final bedroom into a storeroom. It's also holding my chest of drawers, since the bedroom I've chosen turns out to be just large enough to hold my bed (queen size) and that's about it. The main bedroom of the house has been turned into Himself's den, so he's in another of the secondary bedrooms for sleeping. The secondary bedrooms all pretty much face east, so I get a nice early wake-up in the morning (as you'll probably have figured out by the posting time of this update).

At present we're still learning what's available where (neither of us have lived down in the extreme south of Perth before - Himself was based in the western suburbs, I'm from the south-eastern corridor) and sort of finding our feet. Our local shopping centre is reasonably comprehensive - two major supermarkets, two discount/seconds/reject shops (no regular stock listing, but lots of weird and wonderful variety, all of it cheap), a greengrocer and a butcher, plus a bookstore which immediately won my approval by having a range of merchandise including one of the Twilight/Buffy crossover t-shirts ("Then Buffy staked Edward. The end."), along with a chemist, a discount shoe shop, and a pawnbroker. This last is confirmation we're in social security recipient heartland. The nearest regional centre (Rockingham) has a larger mall which I visited yesterday to find out what was available, and the main cinemas are just across the road from the mall.

Since I haven't had the opportunity to start putting books up onto bookshelves, I've been filling in time by playing games on the Xbox. Mostly "The Last Remnant" - I've discovered if I sit a bit closer to the screen, I can make out enough of the text to get a reasonably good idea of what the words are. So I've restarted playing through (I'm up to the first runthrough in the Catacombs, but I'm busy doing a stroll through all the other areas I've opened up first... have I mentioned I over-grind something 'orrible? Battle level 60, and counting) and I'm doing my usual note-taking and such (I'm now up to about a dozen different pieces of paper, each covering different things). It's a good game to be fiddling about with - nice bishounen heroes, easy battle system, standard Squeenix battle frequency (walk walk attack), and it keeps my brain busy enough to get through the hottest hours of the day.

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Current Mood: peaceful

Okay, it's been three weeks since the major meltdown, one week from the mini-meltdown which was averted by immersing myself in FF:Dissidia to the point of obsession (I'm now dreaming Dissidia battles... time to cut the playing down a bit). I'm vaguely sane at present (which reminds me - meds!) and hoping to stay so, even though the universe appears to be trying to make me go completely bonkers. My give-a-damn still isn't, so I'm currently behind on cooking, cleaning and doing anything other than levelling up characters on the PSP.

Dissidia is ... interesting. I've managed to get one character up to level 100 (Cloud) and I'm working on my second (Squall). Discovered that the guy who's voicing Squall isn't the same guy who voiced him in Kingdom Hearts, which says a lot about my hearing, doesn't it? The story mode is sorta fun, although there's a limited amount of enjoyment I can get from it (mostly because I get bored by running through the same thing over and over) - so far I've found the best fun comes from running through story mode for each character once, then coming back and doing it again after they've levelled up a bit (I ran Cloud back through his on level 80 or so, which was a bit like swatting flies with a sledgehammer... for some reason I got a perfect score for section completion after that; Squall went back through at level 30). So far I've beaten Chaos once (he's a right whatsit to beat - three-stage boss, so you have to kill him three times rather than just the once) and seen the final little FMV cutscene, which is cute.

I think one of the things I like about Dissidia is they have the age balance right for Cloud and Squall. One of my pet peeves in KH fandom is that people tend to assume Squall is older than Cloud (probably because Squall has a deeper voice). In fact, it's t'other way round - Cloud starts his game at age 21, while Squall is a good four years younger at age 17 - and if you assume each game took 1 year to run that has Cloud ending up at age 22, with Squall coming in at age 18. Advent Children takes place 2 years after the initial Final Fantasy game, so in Advent Children, Cloud is at least 23. Dissidia Squall looks younger than Dissidia Cloud, which makes me feel all is right with the world again. And yes, I am a picky fangirl.

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Current Mood: okay

It's been about a week since I wrote the "I need help" post, and about a week since the breakdown which prompted it. Since then, I've had a few things happen. I've contacted the Silver Chain people about getting some assistance with ensuring I take my medication regularly. From what I've read on their website, they're probably the best people to provide the kind of help I need, which is someone dropping in on maybe an "every second day" basis, in order to ensure I'm taking my meds regularly and getting out of bed at a reasonable hour. They've returned my contact, and advised me to get a referral from a GP, which I did on Thursday last week. Now I have to wait for them to get back to me again, and let me know whether it's possible for this to happen or not.

I'm back to taking my medication, and I'm going to try and keep consistent with it, even though I know I have problems with this (see the above paragraph). So far I'm on day two, and I'm suffering the understandable side-effects of restarting psych medication after about two weeks without it. Or in other words, I'm dizzy, dopey, and a bit distracted at present. This too will pass, but at the moment I'm trying not to move too much too quickly.

( More under the fold )

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Current Mood: wheee!

So for the last few days I have been mostly playing City of Heroes, or reading the stuff on porn_battle on IJ, chasing down the FF7 anonymous kink meme on LJ or just generally futzing around the web a bit. I've also gone through my plot notes for one of my great big pieces of fic (the one that's at 24K words and counting) and re-organised them into some sort of structure, so I can actually find things. This involved a lot of copy & paste work, and as a result the whole business is now blown out to about 24K words as well. So I have an equal amount of pagespace spent on the plot notes and the actual factual plot. I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not.

( ISAGN:Spelling checkers with definitions available )

( City of Heroes rambling )

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Current Mood: moody

Well, for some reason getting out the two longish pieces I've been working away at on and off over the past year or so and doing some more of the epicyclical rewrites I'm prone to (I call it editing, because that sounds ever so much more purposeful) appeared to have worked to dispel the cranky mood. By the time midnight came around, I was able to kick off the download without wanting to bite the update program, and when I eventually went to bed at close on 3am this morning, I was just fine.

What was even better, I'd added some new content to both of the pieces I'd opened, which really helps. One of them's up to 24,000 words plus, while the other's only at 5,000 or so, but they're both going to be walloping great bastards when (if) they're eventually completed.

I'm still fine this morning, having created my first character on City of Heroes and completed the initial missions. It's an interesting little game, that one. I think I shall see about creating a second character, and see whether I can get any further. One of the only complaints I have is that if you're playing a trial account (as I am) there's a persistent little box in the dead centre of the screen telling you you're playing the trial, and asking whether you want to buy the full version. Mind you, I can live with that for a week or so, while I decide whether or not I want to keep playing. So far the answer is "yes", but that may alter.

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Current Mood: hopeful

It's been a pretty good week so far. I've managed to complete a fortnight's worth of job search inside three days (okay, a fortnight's worth of job search equals ten jobs, but still...) and one of those was a contact from a temp firm regarding a possibility. I've also managed to take my meds for three days running, which is a plus given I've been skiving off on the whole job for the past few weeks.

So, before I head in to my appointment with CRS tomorrow morning at 9am, I have to come up with a list of ten occupations I'd be interested in, and a list of about ten companies I'm going to be cold canvassing for work over the next fortnight or so. Oh, and a template for a cold canvassing letter to run a bit of a mail merge on (why spend hours typing out each one individually if I can get the computer to do the hard stuff for me?). Oh, and fill in my fortnightly form for Centrelink, but that's not really a hardship - they're not even asking for details of where I looked for work this fortnight.

Then I'm back to playing KH2 (even though it's one of the few games I've finished out of the pile). I was playing FF8, but I've given up on that for a bit, mostly because I've found myself up to the final disc, and we're up against Adel, and it's just battle battle battle, and I'm bored. So KH2 is a bit of a relaxation exercise, even if Aerith and Queen Minnie do seem to be battling it out for the position of "Ms Valium" (or possibly "Ms Hash Brownies") in their early appearances. About the only thing I have to watch out for is to set the timer on the fridge (it's a small digital cooking timer with a magnet on the back - hence "on the fridge") so that I finish playing at a reasonable hour and get to bed early enough to get enough sleep for my appointment tomorrow. One of the joys of Squeenix games, I've found, is that they don't have a natural "stop" point, where you can say "okay, time to get up and do something different". I mean, yeah, I can fully understand why, but sometimes it's just a little annoying.

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Current Mood: okay